Archive

We missed Castmodean this week on our show. We hope he returns soon. Kendra and I hostedThePsycoticVulcan and reviewed his mission The Sentinels of Andor. We discussed the DS9 episode The Siege of AR-558and Kendra brought us some tips on dialog writing. Don’t take my word for it. It’s right here.

Outpost adds a new third host with aleniskendra joining the team, adding a touch of credibility to the lunacy. This week we go on the road to another time zone to prerecord our special guest, Zorbane. As we suffer through another foundry-less week, Cast delivers what little news there is. Our Trek Episode discussion takes us to Voyager and the adventures of Captain Proton in Bride of Chaotica. Give us a listen.

Don’t forget to tune in to episode 2(actually, it’ll be the first real episode, but don’t tell anyone) of the Author’s Outpost. You will find us on Twitch at 7:00pm Eastern and 4:00pm Pacific every single Tuesday unless something crazy comes up to prevent it. So join me, CaptPFDennis and Castmodean, the two most experienced foundry podcast hosts(when it comes to myocardial infarction) in all of Star Trek Online.

Our weekly guest will be Aleniskendra. We’ll be reviewing a Fed mission called Time’s Razor: Part 1 by captainazzarano, and discussing Star Trek: Enterprise episodes Borderland, Cold Station 12, and The Augments. We’ll even demonstrate any technique a new author would like to see, live at the end of our show. It’s going to be wicked fun. See you then.

This is an expansion of a review I recently wrote regarding a recent mission I played. I did enjoy the mission but there were time paradoxes that, in my opinion, would be generated and other events that needed to be addressed. The goal of this post is to provide a few things for any author who wishes to create a time traveling mission to think about. To that end I have some suggestions on how to avoid those paradoxes and other issues associated with these types of missions.

One of the first issues most authors do not deal with is the changing of the timeline. Now if it is the player traveling back in time then you would affect the timeline but can also ensure it is preserved. When an adversary travels back in and alters history no one in the current timeline would know the difference. The exception to this would be time travelers, temporal agents and certain species. Without the aid of those types of beings the only other way to avoid this issue is to have the player shielded from the changes in the timeline. This can best be demonstrated in the TOS episode “City on the edge of forever” or the TNG movie “First contact”. In both those examples the characters who maintained knowledge of their timeline and therefore the ability to repair it were shielded from the changes. In the case of the “City on the edge of forever” they were shielded by the emanations from the device on the planet when Doctor McCoy went through. In “First contact” they were caught in the temporal flux of the Borg time portal they created. Deep Space Nine also did an episode where the crew traveled back in time to stop a plot to change the outcome of the mission in the “Trouble with Tribbles” episode. In the DS9 episode they got away with it because of the cloaked ship and no overt contact with the TOS characters. Yes, Captain Sisko interacted with Kirk but only in a passing manner that had no actual affect on the timeline. Therefore it would not be an overt interaction and affect the timeline.

How do avoid these issues? Your mission could start with either a player being intercepted by a time traveler, a species who can detect these changes, temporal agent or a device similar to the Guardian in the TOS “City on the edge of forever” episode. This individual or device shields the player from, either deliberate or accidental, changes to the timeline. From here the player can be briefed or decide as part of the story on how to address the changes made in the timeline from this point. The time paradoxes mentioned at the beginning of this post would be mitigated by this process in the story. How you address the mitigation is your choice but remember the player should not directly interact with people in the original timeline without addressing the concerns of altering the past. The way around this would to write the story so the player was actually part of the historical events that occurred.

That should cover most aspects of time travel missions you create within the Foundry. If you have any questions please let me know and we can discuss them.

Hello, STO Community! My name is Alenis Kendra and I am one of the newer members of the STO universe.

While populating a ground map in the Foundry recently, I realized that my population was lacking any children. Seeing I was attempting to create the feel of a poverty-stricken refugee camp, I felt that a few scurrying urchins would add a level of authenticity.

Thanks to some very helpful tips from the Foundry Chat regulars, I was able to create a reasonable facsimile of Cardassian children as custom costumes. I’d like to share what I learned with you all, in the hopes that it might help some other newbie along the way.

First, in order to create a prepubescent character, you want to start with a male alien template.

In this, his last Back to Basics tutorial, Kirkfat discusses how to advertise your Foundry mission and get it played. He also talks about getting your mission out of the review stage and possibly into a spotlight.

We want you to make mission trailers. Plain and simple. We want you to make them and post them on this site. Trailers are cool and fun to watch, but “I don’t know how to use demorecord” is a consistent complaint that we hear. Then we say “There are tutorials you can watch”, but people are still intimidated by it. “There is sooo much to it. Where do I possibly begin?”

I’m here to tell you that it’s so easy, even an old coot like me can figure it out. Most of the features that scare the crap out of you, don’t even NEED to be used. I’m just going to tell you what I do.

A quick explanation of demorecord:

Ok, to begin, let me just point out that the demorecord function of Star Trek Online is not working quite as it was intended to work. Since it was developed it has suffered with subsequent upgrades to the game. It will no longer display custom NPCs. Any NPC one has made in the Foundry costume editor will not be visible upon playback. Nobody at Cryptic will repair it because they claim it was never meant to be used by the general public and the guy who programmed it is no longer an employee. That being said, I will attempt to get you started on the simplest way to use this mechanic.continue reading…